Hori Smoku
Sailor Jerry gives a brief history of the origins of tattooing in America,
though the main focus of the film seems to be tattooed old men telling
ridiculous stories about the good-old-days and tattoo legend Norman K. Collins.
Collins simply went by Sailor Jerry, but he became one of the trailblazers in
tattooing when he set up shop in Hawaii.
The stories don’t always portray the tattoo legend as the kind of person that
would have made a pleasant companion. His work, however, speaks for itself.

The Coen
brothers have a long career of creative choices and standout successes. They
followed the success of Fargo with the
unique The Big Lebowski, and after
the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
they made the studio films Intolerable
Cruelty and the remake of The
Ladykillers. After No Country for Old
Men, the Coen brothers have made a comedy that aligns with the wince-worthy
moments of Fargo. There is also a personal touch to A Serious Man which seems to come from
the Coen brothers’ own childhood experiences, if only to a small extent.

This darkly
humorous endeavor doesn’t include any wood chippers, ill-fated kidnappings, or
violence of any kind. The movie is painful to watch because of the onslaught of
trouble placed upon Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). The film begins with an
odd prologue that can only be speculated upon after the conclusion of the film.
In a Jewish community a man allows a dybbuk into his home unknowingly. A dybbuk
is the spirit of a dead person, roaming the earth and said to cause bad luck
when crossed.

Whether Larry is
cursed because of his ancestor’s interaction with a dead man or simply because
of the randomness of life is unclear. What is certain is that little seems to
be going right for Larry when we enter the storyline. His wife (Sari Lennick)
is leaving him for Larry’s best friend, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). As if this
weren’t bad enough, Sy wants desperately to talk the whole situation over with
him. They force a peaceful separation on Larry. Meanwhile Larry’s children are
both selfishly absorbed in their own melodrama. His daughter (Jessica McManus)
is saving up for a nose job while his son (Aaron Wolff) is saving up to pay off
a large bully he owes.

The confusion on
Stuhlbarg’s face is a perfect reaction to most of these situations; Larry works
as a math professor who seeks for the solution practically and rationally. With
the non-stop disaster taking over his life, Larry cannot comprehend what he did
to deserve such trouble. His job is no better, as the tenure board is receiving
anonymous negative notes about Larry and a student attempts to ruin his career
when a bribe for a better grade is not accepted.

A Serious Man is not the most accessible
of the Coen brothers’ films, but those who appreciate their sense of humor will
praise it as one of their best. The Blu-ray includes a number of special
features that fans will also appreciate, including a look at the personal
connections between the filmmakers and the film. There is also a featurette on
the creation of the neighborhood sets of Minneapolis
1967 and a featurette about the Hebrew and Yiddish used in the film.

Room 237 reminded me of being a graduate
student in a film studies program, surrounded by theories and ideas that are
occasionally profound. This is not a typical film, or even documentary, but
more of a visual essay on the possible meanings behind Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Some of the theories given
throughout the film are a bit of a stretch, and there are times that the
details being pointed out by the theorist aren’t even entirely accurate. Part
of what makes this film interesting is the variety of possibilities, all so
very different.

The unique thing
about this film is the fact that there is absolutely no new footage. It is all
either footage taken directly from The Shining, or additional film footage from
random movies which help to coincide with whatever the various theorists are
discussing. There are a variety of main ideas found within The Shining, and
each is argued by a veritable authority.

The main
theories within Room 237 about The Shining’s deeper meaning include
discussion of the Holocaust, Native American Indians, the Apollo 11 moon
landing, and even the past as a whole. Having
the footage from the film play as the experts discuss the film is helpful when
there seems to be truth behind their ideas, but it is a double-edged sword for
those who are over-thinking and under-watching.

There is one section of the film
where one of the supporting characters in the film is discussed and one
theorist mentions a point where he sighs when asked to do something, but when
the footage is shown, there is no sigh. There are also many issues of
continuity discusses within the film, one involving the same actor’s clothing
in one of the scenes. Some sequences have glaring continuity issues, such as a
chair disappearing from one shot to the next, or a sticker disappearing from a
bedroom door. If nearly any other director had done this, it would have quickly
been dismissed as an error, but Kubrick’s celebrity has made it so that nothing
he did was a mistake or unintentional. Instead there are plenty of people
willing to come up with a variety of excuses for his intentional errors in
continuity.

The only problem with this is the
errors in some of the theorists. There is a scene where the actor’s pants
supposedly change from shot to shot, and according to the theorist who points
it out, this is intentional and significant for some reason. The only problem
with this theory is the fact that the pants never change. He claims that the
pants are striped in the close-up and then solid in the master shot, but the
stripes simply look solid from further away. It is clear in the high definition
presentation of Room 237 that the pants are actually the same, proving some of
these theories may be the result of a stretched imagination and poor eyesight.

Even disagree with some points, and
unconvinced that Kubrick was the god-like filmmaker everyone makes him out to
be, Room 237 was exactly my type of film. Regardless of my belief, I enjoy the
thought process behind these theories. This is the way I think about movies, and
sometimes my theories are a stretch as well. One thing is certain; it is far
more interesting than simply reading The
Shining as a ghost story.

The Blu-ray release includes a
commentary track with more theories from internet theorist Kevin McLeod, known
to many online as mstrmnd. The special features also include a panel discussion
with some of the experts and the filmmaker at the Stanley Film Festival, which
is nearly an hour long. There are also 11 deleted sequences, a making-of
featurette for the music, and a discussion of the Mondo poster design.

If sexual
innuendo and jokes at the intelligence level of a fifteen-year-old boy are
still humorous to you, or if you still are fifteen, “2 Broke Girls” will make
you laugh. I watch the series with mild amusement, mostly because I have met
girls like the foul-mouthed and sex-obsessed Max (Kat Denning), as well as the
superficial and self-involved Caroline (Beth Behrs). I watch the show because I
can turn it off after twenty minutes, reminded why I no longer see those girls.

Max and Caroline
work in a Brooklyn diner, although it often appears much more like the trendy
hipster cities of Los Angeles than New York. Global
location aside, the diner is a dump which is run by a small and young Asian man
named Han (Matthew Moy), with a few rarely working employees that include Earl
(Garrett Morris) and the lecherous cook, Oleg (Jonathan Kite). Max and Carline
also have a sex-obsessed neighbor named Sophie (Jennifer Coolidge). In fact,
the only time they aren’t discussing sex on some level is when they discuss
cupcakes.

Attempting to
escape their job, the girls try and start up a cupcake business. This season
they open a store, which doesn’t really go anywhere, but they have a few
relationships along the way. The series is full of many devices to keep them
from succeeding too soon, because what kind of show called “2 Broke Girls” has
successful entrepreneurs.

The DVD release
for the second season of 2 Broke Girls has all twenty-four episodes on three
discs. There are also a handful of special features dispersed among the discs,
including unaired scenes and a gag reel. The rest of the features are a bit
like imagine Max’s cupcakes; enjoyable but void of any nutritional value.

First and
foremost, Arrow is yet another CW series. This means a familiar polished set of
colorful visuals, a cast of actors who either look too young or too old for the
role they are playing, and a number of predictably melodramatic love triangle
situations. Production design and casting choices aside, “Arrow” actually
stands above many other CW series of recent history. They seem to make shows
directed exclusively at teenagers, younger the better, but “Arrow” has a few things
going for it that make up for the show’s sillier aspects.

I have never
read any Green Arrow comics, although I find it interesting that Green is such
a popular color to attach to any superhero type character. Whether or not this
series stays close to the comics is a mystery to me, but the narrative in this
series is something of a blend between Robin Hood and Hamlet. As unoriginal as
some of these story elements are, including a crime fighting costume that looks
like a bad-ass Robin Hood with a mask, at least they have ground the story in
solid narratives. On top of this solid foundation, the series makes bold choice
to keep the origin story something of a mystery, told only through flashback
sequences. This helps keep the series interesting, especially when the stale
teen melodrama begins to take over.

There is also a
great deal of action, and it is all done somewhat realistically. Though the
logic of some of the arrows is about as believable as the gadgets James Bond
was using not too long ago, there are no superhuman elements within the
storyline. The action is a mixture of MMA fighting and parkour, all rather
impressively choreographed. This helps to overlook the fact that nearly every
set seems to be backlit by green gels. Or that an enormously large percentage
of the cast members have green eyes, despite it being the rarest color. If you
can ignore this sledgehammer attempts at subtle imagery, there are some
sincerely compelling action storylines to make this one of the more solid
superhero series.

In a new trend
from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, the Blu-ray release of “Arrow” comes
with a DVD and Ultraviolet copy as well. The only problem with this generous
addition is the amount of space the additional discs take up. Suddenly this single
season is a massive box set, albeit an impressive one. The special features
helped me out in understanding some of the origins for the story with the
“Arrow Comes Alive” featurette, as well as a look at the stunts and
choreography training for the film’s impressive action. There are also unaired
scenes, a gag reel and footage from Paleyfest with the cast and crew of the
series.

When “24” came
out it was the first post-9/11 terrorist thriller on television, and for a few
years it seemed cutting edge. Even with the absurdity of the time constraint
gimmick, “24” had moments of brilliance, and it provided a cathartic and
patriotic win against terrorism. After the series had been done to death,
writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa moved on to loosely adapt the Israeli
series entitled “Hatufim,” which means Prisoner of War.

“Homeland” is a much more complex and
character driven than “24” was, filled with a certain amount of intensity and
action while also retaining a certain level of realism. It follows the
suspicions of CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Golden Globe winner Claire Danes), a
bipolar woman with an obsession destroyed her career in the first season. When
a marine is rescued after being a prisoner of the Al Qaeda for years, Carrie
suspects that he may have been turned. Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis)
returns home a different man, which is apparent to his family as well as
Carrie. The question remains whether this is simple post traumatic stress or
whether Brody has been turned into a sleeper agent plotting a terrorist attack
against the country.

Season one ended
in such a way that suggested Brody’s secrets would remain hidden, dragging the
same premise out for another season. Fortunately, this was not the case. What
makes “Homeland” remain compelling in the second season is the way in which the
writer’s are unafraid to tear everything down in order to take the series in a
new direction. The manner in which the second season ends also suggests a whole
new approach in season three. Television used to be safe and dull, predictably
formatted in the series and each individual episode. “Homeland” follows none of
those rules, and is one of the reasons why television has grown more
sophisticated.

The 3-disc set
includes all twelve season two episodes, along with exclusive story extensions
and a prologue to season three. There are also some deleted scenes, a
featurette about the finale and the sequences shot in Israel, and a
Super 8 film diary by Damian Lewis.

There are a
dozen different ways that “The Mentalist” can be compared to other shows. You
could easily compare it to the cable show “Psych,” but I tend to find
similarities with this show and “Lie to Me.” Both use the study of human
behavior in order to deduce the truth behind a crime. “Lie to Me” was about a
man brilliantly able to detect lies, better than a polygraph. There is a
sequence in “The Mentalist” in which a suspect says that he heard Patrick Jane
(Simon Baker) could tell when anyone was lying.

Simon Baker is
what truly seems to make the show work the way it does. It is a dark show about
a celebrity psychic whose family was murdered by a serial killer named Red John,
following some ill-made arrogant remarks about catching him. Although Jane is a
grieving father and husband dedicated to hunting down the man responsible for
vengeance, Baker plays the role in a carefree manner that is likeable. He is
nearly always jovial and easy-going despite the heavy weight that he carries,
making his character a unique addition to the investigative detective genre.

Jane works
alongside a team of specially trained detectives in California. The team is headed up by Teresa
Lisbon (Robin Tunney) along with Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman), Grace Van Pelt
(Amanda Righetti), and Agent Kimball Cho (Tim Kang). They catch a variety of
killers and every once and a while an episode continues the Red John narrative,
which tends to remove the lighter tone of the show. More episodes seem
dedicated to Red John season five, which makes me wonder if the final season is
upon us.

All twenty-two
season five episodes are includes in this five disc set, along with a handful
of special features. There are two featurettes; one follows the process of
production, from script to screen, while the other deals with the process of
training given to the actors in order to behave like real law enforcement.

In the mid-1990s there was suddenly a shift in the style of
filmmaking, and many purists laid blame at the feet of MTV and the music video
generation. This was not unfounded, especially once MTV began to list the name
of the director along with the song information in November of 1992. Visually
prolific directors had long been created from the world of marketing and
commercial advertisements, but the new medium added an avenue to success.
There was a sudden influx of directors who had honed their craft as an entirely
visual medium, which created filmmakers with a distinct style and newfound
celebrity. Lasse Hallström built a career upon his work with Abba, Michel
Gondry with Björk, Spike Jonze with Weezer and The Beastie Boys, and Gore
Verbinski started out making punk music videos for Bad Religion and NOFX.

Eventually these filmmakers were absorbed into Hollywood and it was
business as usual, but twenty years later we are witnessing a new generation of
filmmakers with all-new avenues of work experience brought by online media. It
was less than ten years ago that the video sharing website Vimeo was created,
the name itself being an anagram for movie. Four months later, YouTube followed
suit, and by October of 2007 Vimeo became the first to offer support for the
playback of high definition quality video. This laid the groundwork for
filmmakers to begin sharing their content online, both amateur and
professional. Suddenly there was a format to suitable for the previously dismissed
short film, and now we are seeing filmmakers emerge from this medium.

Vogt-Roberts and Nick Offerman at Sundance

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is one of these up-and-coming
filmmakers. Although The Kings of Summer
is Vogt-Roberts’ first feature, he approached it with years of experience and a
collection of valuable professional connections. Vogt-Roberts created a website
with an assortment of comedian friends to showcase videos he had produced and
directed, which led to direction of web content for FOX, Sony, and Warner Bros.
He then created an hour-long special for Comedy Central and directed episodes
of HBO’s “Funny of Die.” While the music video directors of the 1990s built
their careers upon the success of the musicians they were known to work with,
Vogt-Roberts utilized the comedians he has built relationships with throughout
his many online projects (and the offline television off-shoots of and online
video sharing site) in order to create an impressive ensemble debut.

I sat down for an exclusive conversation with Vogt-Roberts a week before
the home video release of The Kings of
Summer, in order to pick his brain about the film’s influences,
improvisation, and the difficulties shooting in the woods.

Ryan Izay: So, I watched the film two times
last night, back-to-back. I think I’m ready to write a dissertation on this
thing.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: I feel like I have to apologize for
you having to watch it twice.

Izay: The second time was actually with
the commentary track. The first thing I want to know is what kind of dynamic is
going on with you and Gabe (Gabriel Basso)? You rip him a new one in the
commentary track.

Vogt-Roberts: (laughs) I actually haven’t listened
to that commentary. We all just developed that dynamic on set. We’re all really
close and Gabe was just kind of a bully to everyone, and he just took over that
role of telling everyone they were doing a terrible job. And so now we’ve all
flipped it on him and we just give him a lot of shit.

Izay: It made for a very entertaining
commentary. I can tell you all have a real friendship by the way you talk.

Vogt-Roberts: Yeah, we had a lot of fun. Those
kids are great.

Gabriel Basso, Moises Arias and Nick Robinson (left to right)

Izay: I would love to hear how this film
came together. I know that Chris’ screenplay was on The Black List in 2009. How
did it come to be something you were attached to direct?

Vogt-Roberts: It was on the black list and the
company that bought it, BigBeach, they were trying
to figure out if they were going to make it. It’s an interesting script. It’s
not a film people were in the business of making, the way it’s about kids but
sort of for adults. I’d been looking to make my first feature. I’d been making
shorts and TV commercials for awhile. I have a couple short films with
characters that approach the material in a similar way; dark but funny, sad but
in an uplifting way. They came to me and I fell in love with the script
immediately.

Izay: You’ve got a lot of great bit parts
filled with extremely talented actors; Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”),
Craig Cackowski (“Weeds”), Megan Mullaly (“Will & Grace”), Mary Lynn
Rajskub (“24”), Kumail Nanjiani, and even a very brief appearance from Tony
Hale (“Arrested Development”). How did
you get all these great people involved?

Vogt-Roberts: The whole idea to me, to some
degree, was that I wanted to make an ensemble. I wanted to create a world where
everything is slightly left of center, and in order to do that I felt like
every small part needed someone who could elevate the role a little bit. A lot
of those actors I had worked with in the past on different projects: Tony Hale,
a lot of the comedians like Hannibal Buress, friends of mine I called up and
said “Hey, would you fly into Ohio
for a day and shoot this small little scene.”

Izay: How much was improvised on set with
so many small roles filled with such talented comedians?

Vogt-Roberts: It was a mixture of both. Chris’
script was really great and there is stuff that is verbatim on screen as it is
in the script, and I also encouraged a lot of improv. I encouraged a lot of
riffing and playing around if we wanted to loosen it up, but that’s only
because I’m not fourteen and the writer isn’t fourteen. I wanted the film to
feel a little softer, and to have the kids speaking like a fourteen or fifteen
would speak like.

Izay: I think I heard you mention something
about improv lessons in the commentary.

Vogt-Roberts: Yeah, I put them through improv
training, not so that they would be super quick and witty but because I wanted
them to feel comfortable enough to bring themselves to the roles. I wanted them
to feel invested and I wanted them to be able to show up and elevate each of
the roles. And they did. A lot of my favorite stuff was improvised.

Izay: I’d love to hear what it was like
filming in the woods. It may have just been the way it was shot, but we really
do feel immersed in wilderness for much of the film. What was that like on set?
Was it a pain in the ass?

Vogt-Roberts: (laughs) Yeah, it was kind of
madness, but it was pretty great. A lot of those are cheats, where there’s a
busy road or a house right behind camera that you can’t see. But a lot of that
stuff is pretty deep into the woods, and… (laughs) It was a little maddening.
It really was out there, it’s sweaty and hot, and you’re getting eaten by bugs.
I think there was a whole period of the movie where I don’t think I went to the
bathroom once because I was sweating out all the water I was taking in. It was
kind of horrible and then also kind of great, just thinking, “I can’t remember
the last time I was in the woods for a month at a time.” It just forced you to
bond, which was nice. Everyone was going through the same shit together, so it
was definitely a good exercise in team building.

Izay: Any nightmare days that stood out in
the shoot? Anything you would go back and do over differently, if you could?

Vogt-Roberts: I wouldn’t change much. There are a
few scenes that I would change coverage on, but nothing major. The movie is the
movie. We had a couple difficult days. On the one day we blew up that truck we
were shooting in this dried lakebed and a tree collapsed. It crushed one of our
trucks, and then half of our crew got stung by bees all in the same day. We had
some pretty insane, biblically hard days. I wouldn’t change too much. It was a
sort of rite of passage.

Izay: What about preparation for this
film? Did you watch any other films for inspiration? I know a lot of critics
have been comparing it to Stand By Me,
Son of Rambow, and I definitely saw a
little Wes Anderson in there.

Vogt-Roberts: Before
we started making it, I didn’t watch a lot of films. Before I started pitching
on it, that’s when I watched a lot of stuff. It was sort of a post-modern Stand by Me, to some degree. The kids of
that generation were capable. Our generation, we’re kind of wusses. We couldn’t
survive the way they could. A lot of it was about the differences between those
generations of kids. Stand by Me was
obviously a reference; John Hughes was also a huge influence. In the first two
minutes of the movie, there are references to John Hughes, Kubrick and Terrence
Malick. The movie as a whole is a variation on a mash-up, but I think it wears
its influences very clearly on its sleeve. And it’s really influenced by
Malick, just because I was obsessed with seeing if I could make a really dumb
Terrence Malick movie; can we combine really ethereal images, and then make
jokes effectively? I also wanted to make a throwback to old Amblin movies, but
that still felt fresh, original, and contemporary.

Izay: I
absolutely got the Malick as I was watching it. I’m glad you said it though,
because I thought it was just in my head. So, when did you first realize you
wanted to be a filmmaker?

Vogt-Roberts: I
was the type of kid who would make stop-motion movies with my action figures. I
always loved watching behind-the-scenes specials and I just loved movies. I was
one of those kids. Star Wars blew my
mind. I didn’t really think it was possible until much later. It wasn’t until I
was going to college that I was like, “maybe I should give this thing a shot.”
I just kind of went ahead, and said “let’s see what happens.” Since I was a kid
I was pretty obsessed with the world of movies. I loved going to the movie
theater, making little shorts, and just building things. I just loved the world
creation of it all.

Izay: What are
some of your favorite comedies? DesertIsland picks.

Vogt-Roberts: My
favorite comedies are Ghostbusters, Annie Hall, Boogie Nights, Three Kings.
Some of them aren’t even necessarily comedies but they’re the things that I
laugh the hardest at.

Izay: And what’s
next for you, Jordan? Are there more feature films lined up or are you planning
to go back to making more shorts?

Vogt-Roberts:
I’m making some TV stuff right now; a couple different pilots. But I’m in the
process of setting up a few features at different places. It varies, but I just
want to work in all different mediums. I love making shorts, and I love
commercials because they are a lot of fun to film. I love all of them.

Izay: Thanks
for talking with me, Jordan. I really did enjoy the film. Two times was not as
difficult as I imagined when I started the commentary track. You’ve got a good
movie.

Vogt-Roberts: I
haven’t even heard that commentary, so I have no idea how it holds up.

Izay: You guys
run a little silent towards the end, but it is solid track before you run out
of things to say. And then you get a second wind when the credits start to
roll, almost like you’re ready to start the film over again and keep going.
Especially Moises Arias.

Vogt-Roberts: (laughs) Well, we had recorded two
commentary tracks that day. So Chris and I had just recorded it once and the
kids showed up, and I think I do remember us running out of steam a little bit
at the end. We might release the
other commentary track as a bonus for people online. That one’s a little more
straight and informative, whereas this one with the kids was definitely a
little goofier and weirder.

The Kings of Summer is available on DVD and
Blu-ray today, September 24th.

The premise for The East is promising, albeit simply a
more socially aware variation of the much better German film, The Edukators. The most frustrating
aspect of the film is not the wasted concept, however, but the self important
way with which the material is approached. The left-wing agenda is not even as
strong as the filmmaker’s arrogant airs of self importance in filmmaking. Even
with a strong visual style, director Zal Batmanglij doesn’t have enough
narrative convictions to tell a convincing story, a flaw which I would
attribute to the fact that he continuously allows his star to co-write
screenplays with him.

When attending a
screening of The Sound of My Voice,
Batmanglij’s debut feature which was also co-written by lead actress Brit Marling,
I witnessed an interview with the director and his co-writer. It was clear by
the manner in which he deferred everything to Marling who has control in the
filmmaking process. I don’t know what Batmanglij’s relationship is with the
actress, but Marling appears to have far too much influence at the detriment to
each project, all the while Batmanglij seems content to follow along like a
lost puppy. This is as much of a problem as the narrative’s detours into
unnecessary romantic relationships between the terrorists. The minute-long
scene where we watch Marling do nothing but cry on a bridge with some of the
film’s sloppiest camera work to the tune of a emoting pop song is a perfect
example why an actor should not be allowed this much vain control in the filmmaking
process.

Marling stars as an agent for an
elite intelligence firm, Sarah Moss, though her approach to going undercover to
investigate the enviro-terrorist group is treated as though she were an F.B.I.
agent. Clearly this would be a stretch for the young actress, so instead she is
working for some unknown firm of rich executives. Since Sarah is on the side of
the rich 1% in her investigation, she must also be naively Christian in order
to enforce even more of the film’s asinine stereotypes and melting pot of
half-baked ideas. This film is filled with nonsensical script additions such as
this, which must not have appeared to be a problem for Marling as long as she
made herself look good and wrote her character into every scenes of the film.
One of the movie’s more obnoxious moments is when Sarah checks into a hotel in
order to dye her brown hair peroxide blonde in order to fit in better with the
hippie terrorists. Not only does the dye job seem contradictory to her cover,
but the bottle job is followed up by shots of her perfectly highlighted hair,
complete with brown roots which mysteriously grew in a matter of minutes.

This is a thriller which takes itself
far too seriously, especially considering there is not a single scene without a
glaring plot-hole to tear down the illusion of self-declared sophisticated
entertainment. Like the group of wannabe modern hippies calling themselves ‘The
East,’ there are so many attempts at forcing random elements together that the
result is nothing more than a large unorganized mess. Though the film looks
fantastic, the structure offers as much stability as the rundown shack the
group hides out in for much of the film. The only thing worse than a stupid
movie is one filled with the disillusion intelligent, and The East is the most self-important thriller in years.

The Blu-ray includes several
making-of featurettes about the script and the cast, as well as some
agenda-minded features that discuss the left-wing ideas inserted into the
film’s screenplay. None of these features are recommended for anyone who felt
the way I did about this film, unless you need more proof of the filmmakers’
sense of self-importance.

Not every filmmaker got their start through a prestigious
film school, or by maxing out credit cards to make their first feature. There
are many avenues of life experience which can easily become a valued asset to
the art and business of filmmaking, as I discovered from my interview with
Canadian writer/director Damian Lee. As a former athlete, Lee’s filmography has
had the type of stamina hard training sports might require; completed with
years with patience and dedication. Breakout,
a backwoods thriller starring Brendan Fraser, Dominic Purcell (“Prison Break”),
and Ethan Suplee (“My Name is Earl”), is the latest release from
writer/director Lee in a career of filmmaking that spans over thirty years. An
athlete never stops training, developing and growing, and this is the work
ethic that Damian has clearly brought with him into his career in film
production.

Ryan Izay: Damian, I’ll get to Breakout in a minute but first I have to
ask about a rumor I heard about you. Is it true that you used to be a
bare-knuckle boxer in Peru?

Damian Lee: (laughs) Well, I started out as an
athlete. I actually had a couple of sports that I participated in
professionally. One of them was boxing, for a little bit. At one point I fought
Trevor Berbick, Heavyweight champion of the world, in Jamaica. There
was some bare-fisted fighting that went on for awhile, but it wasn’t as
extensive as perhaps you’d imagine. But there was a lot of boxing. It’s a sport
I got into when I was pretty young, and I liked it. And did it for quite a
while. Some of it got pretty brutal, but it was an adventure and I had the
privilege of fighting some pretty notable fighters. Not that I did that well,
I’ll tell you.

Izay: How does one go from being an
athlete to a filmmaker?

Lee: Well, one of the things that I did
was ski professionally for quite awhile, and the ski racing was broadcast on
television a lot. So, I was around that and around television production. When
I quit ski racing and all the other sports I was doing, I started to produce,
direct and write those television shows. And that got pretty boring after a
couple years, because there’s no plot. You’d show someone running, or kayaking,
or something, but it gets pretty boring. So, then I made my first movie. I made
a very low-budget movie for $125,000, and it was Jim Carrey’s first movie. It’s
called CopperMountain. I made it at CopperMountain.
It had Alan Thicke in it. There was literally no plot to it; it was just two
guys going to CopperMountain to ski and pick up
girls. So that’s how I segued into the production business. And there was a
natural rhythm that I liked in production. There was a gearing up, not unlike
athletic events. And I find that a lot of athletes translate pretty well into
the production industry. There’s a similar work ethic, and actually producing a
film can be pretty physically demanding. Boxing and other sports really helped
me in terms of physical dynamism, so that was a big asset, actually. So, that
was the transition.

Izay: You’ve got quite a few writing
credits, as well as directing. Have you always been a writer or is just that
you wanted the control that comes with creating your own story?

Lee: Both are probably correct. I was
writing a lot before I started writing for films. I always enjoyed writing and
then when I started writing for films, I found the writing aspects, in many
ways, is the only true creative aspect of the process. The rest of the process
is quite interpretive. Actors interpret,
directors interpret, production designers interpret; we interpret the words on
the page. It’s one of the aspects of the process that you are left to your own
devices, and vices, so that you can actually work quite freely. It’s probably
the most liberating aspect of the entire process. Of course, there is control.
You can design a picture before you shoot. Or if you think of actors you’d like
to work with, or actors who can capture the moment that you’re envisioning on
the page. So, that very much is a control thing, but for me, I enjoy the freedom
of creating a vision. I very much enjoy that.

Izay: Do you have cast members you would
like as you’re doing the writing?

Lee: I definitely have archetypes in
mind. And from the archetypes, whether it’s subconscious or conscious, the
archetypes begin to manifest themselves in the articulation of particular
personas and names. But I think you write in archetypes first, before thinking
of particular actors, whether we consciously do it or not. Because the
archetypes represent a particular type of energy, or device, or momentum, and
that exists for the story. And if that device needs to be represented in a
human form, I begin to envision the particular face of an actor.

Izay:A
Dark Truth had political issues in the screenplay, and Breakout has environmental ones. Are these issues which have a
personal significance as you are writing? Do you intentionally integrate issues
into your genre films?

Lee: Very much so. What I like to do is
take issues of importance, be it spiritual, political, sociological, monetary,
whatever, and I like to find the heaviest issue you can deal with and then tell
it in the most physically dynamic way. For example, if you had a scene
discussing politics with a person, if you take the extreme dynamic level it
could be two officers interrogating, water-boarding, a member of Al Qaeda. Then
the political views are articulated as a physical thing within the scene. I
like to find those moments of friction, and explore what the film wants to say
in the realm of the frictional conflict.

Izay: What was the seed of inspiration for
Breakout?

Lee: I think there it was the idea of
ends versus means. To what extent are we willing to put ourselves. For example,
Nelson Mandela. How many years was Nelson Mandela in prison for? 27 years. He
had chances when he was in prison; if he had capitulated, in a signed statement
he was wrong, he would have gotten out. But he believed so strongly in what he
was doing that the objective justified the means in which he was suffering.
That was one of the themes in Breakout
that I wanted to explore. There was a great film called Witness with Harrison Ford, many years ago. That film started out
as an episode for “Gunsmoke.” Witness
started out as a single episode, but it was never made for “Gunsmoke,” and it
morphed into this Academy Award-winning film. Another film I’ve always really
liked, that I wanted to explore in this, was Deliverance. The thing I find interesting about that movie… the
rednecks, they weren’t doing anything wrong. It was acceptable morality in
their world, right? I love Dominic’s character in Breakout. When he’s trying to kill the kids and their father, he
sees it as God’s will. I really like he can embrace a religious philosophy that
no matter what they are doing, he thinks they’re right. Look at Islamic
extremism. Look at Catholic extremism! People think the Spanish Inquisition was
just a few years; it lasted almost 700 years. The final person put to death in
the Spanish Inquisition was in Mexico
City in 1850. It’s pretty amazing. So, anyway those
were the themes I wanted to explore in Breakout.
And stories I wanted to tell. Deliverance
is an amazing film, and that scene is
an amazing scene. And Witness is an
amazing film. So, those are themes I wanted to explore, and also the aspects of
‘ends-versus-mean.’ Those are all important to me, in terms of looking at this
film.

Lee: It was, just in terms of humping the
gear around. We were humping a lot of hills and rivers and stuff. Even if we
weren’t that far in, a half-a-mile or whatever over woods and rocks, it was
basically just the movement of gear that was difficult. And also having the
cast, in some of the shots, move over distances. It’s difficult to coordinate
moving the cast back into position ‘A.’ So, if I’m like “Let’s do that take
again,” if the canoes were at point ‘A’ and they’ve moved 500 yards down the
river, to get that canoe back up the river takes a lot of time and energy.
So…patience, patience, patience. There’s a lot of dead time when you’re doing
something like that. If you’re doing the big master take, you can’t hurry that.
Getting into position in the morning took longer, getting out took longer, and
the individual master takes took time themselves.

Izay: As far as casting goes, I noticed
that you worked with Dominic Purcell again in your upcoming film, A Fighting Man. Can we hear a little about that? It isn’t based on
your days as a bare-knuckle boxer, is it?

Lee: (laughs) No… I really like this
film. It’s basically all set in the ring. Dominic plays an older fighter, 43
years of age, whose been retired for four years. He’s not a very good fighter;
he’s just never been knocked down. And he’s proud of that one thing. He comes
back because he needs the money; his mother is dying and he wants to take her
back to Ireland
one last time. And he ends up fighting this young kid, 20 years of age, called
King Solomon. It’s a story of the old and the young meeting in the ring, and
what they come to mean to each other. It’s a story about them earning the
respect of each other in most brutal of circumstances.

Izay: What boxing films influenced your
making of A Fighting Man?

Lee: I like Raging Bull a lot. The boxing in that, at least from my
perspective, leave some things to be desired. But it’s a great boxing film and
very much influenced me in many ways. Also, The
Champ, a Jon Voight film, another great film. But again, if you look at the
boxing by today’s standards, seems to be lacking. But the heart is very
substantial. That was a big film, in terms of significance of heart and spirit
in the ring. The first Rocky was a
great boxing film, and then I think a lot of the other ones were less boxing
and something more of an event. The first Rocky
was influential in many ways, and Dominic Purcell’s character certainly has
echoes of Stallone’s Rocky.

Izay: What about your stylistic influences
when it comes to the actual boxing? Are there films in which you do like the
way they approached it?

Lee: I think I like aspects of the films.
I like certain aspects of Raging Bull;
I liked certain aspects of the first Rocky.
Those are films that I liked certain aspects of, stylistically. I wanted to
make the film quite real in terms of the coverage of the fighting. I had the
fighters training in the ring, learning the choreography of the boxing four
months out before the filming started. So these guys knew the boxing so well, I
could film this in its entirety in a wide shot and the boxing would actually
play. The trainer who was working with both fighters and acting as the primary
choreographer was a great fighter himself, and I used him as the referee in the
fight.

Izay: Any other projects you are working
on right now?

Lee: Yeah, there are a few films. A film
called Christian Soldier, which is in
development. It deals with ethics in extremely violent situations. I like the potential
of that, though not a lot of work has been done on that yet; and I think the
title is compelling. Also a film that David Peoples wrote, that I did the last
draft of. David Peoples, of course, who wrote Blade Runner and Unforgiven,
so that’s a pretty substantial film. There’s a film I’ve been working on with
the United Nations for the last four years; it deals with water deprivation.
The word ‘news’ comes from North, East, West, South, and so I took that as a
template for this film, in which there is water deprivation in different parts
of the globe that become interconnected. And we have A Fighting Man in the post stage right now and my editor is Bill
Steinkamp. Bill did Scent of a Woman,
A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Fabulous Baker
Boys; he was Sydney Pollack’s editor for twenty-years. I consider it a
great privilege to be working with him as my editor and co-conspirator.

Izay: When can we look forward to seeing A Fighting Man?

Lee: I would imagine next spring. We’ll be
finished before the end of this year. I think we start to mix it two months
from now, and then the picture should be completely finished and we’ll be
working with Sony for distribution. It’s a hell of film, really moving story.
Famke Janssen is in the film, Dominic is in there, of course, James Caan, Kim
Coates, Louis Gossett Jr., Adam Beach…It’s a pretty impressive cast.

Izay: I look forward to seeing that.

Lee: I want you to see it. And after you
watch it, call me and let’s talk about that film.

Breakout was
released on DVD on September 17th through Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment. Also, A Dark Truth is
available now on Instant Netflix, Redbox, and on DVD and Blu-ray.